Ernest Hendon -- last survivor of notorious study

Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times

Published
4:00 am PST, Sunday, January 25, 2004

Ernest Hendon, the last surviving participant in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the U.S. government's 40-year study of the effects of untreated syphilis on a group of black men in rural Macon County, Ala., has died. He was 96.

Mr. Hendon, who was in the control group that did not have syphilis, died Jan. 16 of natural causes associated with aging in a hospital in Opelika, Ala., according to his niece, Dorothy Thomas.

Mr. Hendon was one of 623 black men who unwittingly participated in the U. S. Public Health Service study of "the effects of untreated syphilis in the Negro male."

The study began in 1932 and ended in 1972 after former Public Health Service investigator Peter Buxton exposed the study's unethical procedures to an Associated Press reporter.

Living in a rural area where doctor visits were rare, the men in the study were induced to participate by the promise of free health care, free transportation to and from hospitals and free hot lunches when they got there.

Mr. Hendon, who grew up on the family farm with nine siblings, told AP in 2001 that he had no idea what he was getting into. "They said it was a study that would do you good," he said.

Mr. Hendon and his late brother, Louie, were among a control group of about 200 men who did not have syphilis. About 400 other participants had been chosen for the study because they had the disease. At the time, the Tuskegee area reportedly had the highest syphilis rate in the nation.

The men, however, were not told they had the highly contagious, sexually transmitted disease. If left untreated, syphilis can cause blindness, deafness, mental illness, heart failure, paralysis and bone deformities.

People in the study who had syphilis were told only that they had "bad blood."

Treatment for the disease was withheld -- even after penicillin therapy became widely available in the 1940s and despite an Alabama law requiring treatment of syphilis sufferers.

The study was conducted to determine from autopsies what the disease does to the human body. And to help ensure that their families would agree to autopsies when participants died, the government offered the men burial insurance to cover the cost of their caskets and graves.

By the time the study was exposed in 1972, 28 participants reportedly had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, at least 40 wives had been infected and 19 children had contracted the disease at birth.

News of the study -- headlines ranged from "Nightmare Experiment" to "Official Inhumanity" -- prompted a landmark debate among doctors, scientists and public officials over the ethics of using human beings in clinical experiments.

And, public health experts say, public awareness of the notorious study has contributed to a deep distrust of official medical studies among many minorities.

Mr. Hendon, who never married, is survived by a sister, Willion Chambliss of Tuskegee; and two brothers, Willard and North, both of Cleveland.